It's an ethical quagmire in which we wander whenever we try to separate the work of talented artists with the sometimes-messy aspects of their private lives. Most of the time, we can overlook the misdeeds of drunks, junkies, pillheads and compulsive gamblers since, after a rule, the only people they're harming directly are themselves. But what about artists who directly harm other people? Spousal abusers and child molesters, for instance, are capable of creating great works of art, too, but can we ever look at their works in quite the same way as we did before we knew of their offenses? I don't have any easy answers here, but one thing that can help is if we develop our faculty to think critically, because sometimes clues about an artist's private life can be found, hiding in plain sight, in the creative work itself.
---Baron V
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